Kevin Baker has an uberpost he’s been working on for a few days on the great kerfuffle. Go have a read.
UPDATE: Kevin closes with
Our job, then, is not to “Frighten the White People,” it’s to make them MAD. It’s to make them “pro-freedom, pro-individual, pro-principles.” It’s to educate them.
Which explains why I had such a harsh objection to the Letter ot the Editor. Anything that makes it easier for the population to dismiss our message is not helpful, from my point of view. The great thing about our system is, if you get enough people angry, you don’t need a revolution, because we can throw the bastards out in the voting booth. We did it in 1994, but we didn’t follow through. People need to get mad, and stay mad, until things really change. That’s a tall order, and I share Kevin’s hope that it’s not too late.
Really? In none of the elections that I have voted in has “throw the bastards out” been on the ballot. You can only vote them in after which the system is stacked against getting them out until they retire or die or something.
It’s stacked against getting them out, but if the people get angry enough they can do it. They did it in 1994. The problem is, they replaced them with other bastards. We managed to wash, but we forgot to rinse and repeat.
“You can only vote them in after which the system is stacked against getting them out until they retire or die or something.”
Uh, if you’ve voted someone in, you can vote someone ELSE in later.
Also, we can put a lot of pressure on those who are elected to retire after X number of years. Lots of the Class of ’94 Republicans left office in 2000, thereby keeping their word. Of course, the other side did no such thing, so the Republicans proved a point that translated into exactly nothing. I’d say that a Constitutional limit on Congresscritters was necessary – and if Congress won’t help out, then that is doable by threatening the Congress with a convention. Have 36 or 37 states pass a resolution for a Concon, with the other one or 2 likely. Congress will move VERY quickly to pass an Amendment to send out to the states.
It all comes down to grassroots pressure. Such pressure can be brought to bear by a lot of angry people – and that’s where the efforts should lie. Fighting a revolution, while romantic in theory, is truly a last resort. It is an extremely dirty and nasty business – just read the papers over the last few years related to Yugoslavia, Lebanon, etc., not to mention our own history books for both the Revolution and the Civil War/War of Northern Aggression (as your preference may be). MUCH easier and less messy to settle with vigorous verbal and political arguments than with rifles, rockets, bombs and tanks.
Uh, if you’ve voted someone in, you can vote someone ELSE in later.
In principle you are correct but look at the current situation, i.e. our choices are Obama or McCain. Liberals are probably voting Obama and everybody else is voting against Obama. That’s not voting someone in or out and next time could be a very long four years from now, what with Pelosi and Reid in charge of Congress.
As for a Constitutional Convention, I think that is even less likely. As you may have noticed not only have individual rights been eroded so have states rights. The effort to change us from a republic to a democracy has been underway for far longer than people realize.
I may not know how to verbalize as well as some on here but I do know that the system is broken and actions like those that happened in the House this past Friday are not encouraging to those of us that are still paying attention. Sadly, most of the citizens are not paying attention.
Our choices were molded by the primaries. I donated to the campaign of Fred Thompson, but he didn’t make it. I agree, we drew a bad hand this time. But there will be other hands, and it is possible to do better.
Heh! I’ve been watching this show since 1960. They always have been and always will be the same “non choice” lesser of two evils. And half the time the greater of the two evils gets elected.
Well, to some degree, I think that’s always going to be the case. Because the candidates represent a lot of compromises that have to be made. From a gun rights standpoint, there’s an awful lot to hate about George W Bush, but in the big picture, we haven’t fared too poorly under him. We’ve been able to move the ball forward, at least a little bit.
If I may quote Mencken:
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.
And:
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
Can you picture Ted Kennedy in fishnets?
And:
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule–and both commonly succeed, and are right… The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.
All that from the mid 1930’s or earlier.
Sometimes it’s difficult not to conclude that things today aren’t really different than they’ve ever been. The bullshit might smell different, but it’s always been there. The scary part is that what we have now might be the best we can hope for.
Prisoners Dilemma
Example: airplane hijackings. Hijackings first started to occur during the 1970’s. Their purpose was either to raise awareness to a political cause or for extortion for money. Passengers that were stuck in these situations had the classic prisoners dilemma. The hijackers had a weapon and the passengers did not. The passenger was at a disadvantage to attack the hijacker without the support of the other passengers. A passenger had no way of knowing if the other passengers would back his attack or sit back and wait. Without that foreknowledge the passenger is disinclined to attack and risk his life when a better chance or the situation may change can occur.
In a way Mike V has the same prisoners dilemma he does not know at what point other gun folks will back a resistance to certain BATF actions. The reactions are much the same. Other gun folks like Sebastian are waiting for a better situation and do not think it is time for he personally, to risk or sacrifice him for a failed attack.